Wednesday, 25 February 2015

Hello everyone, welcome to another week on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. This week we are announcing the winner of challenge Seven. The winner of our £15 prize to spend at Chocolate Baroque is Janny, whose card was drawn by Random.org as the overall winner. Congratulations Janny, we hope that you enjoy your prize.

You can also display our Winner's badge on your blog, details of how to obtain the badge can be found on the FAQ tab at the top of the page. Please email Lesley on lesley@chocolatebaroque.com so that she can organise your voucher.

Our Top Three this month unusually have turned out to be a Top Four, as three entries tied with the same amount of votes. They were all chosen by the Design Team, and as always, we had a very difficult time choosing from the superb selection of entries that we received. Our Top Four in no particular order are:

Congratulations girls, you can display the Top Three badge on your blog. Details of how to obtain the badge may be found on the FAQ tab at the top of the page. Well done to everyone who entered, and we hope that you will enter the current challenge. You can find the details here.

We have some more Design Team inspiration for you this week. First of all we have a retro inspired card from Florence:

A vibrant card from Debbie is our third piece of inspiration for you, using bold floral motifs:

Finally Maria has provided a lovely scene from Nature in the challenge colours:

Thank you girls for the inspiration. We hope that they will inspire you to want to join in the creative fun of our challenge.

We will be back next week with more projects from the Design Team, but until then, we look forward to seeing more of your entries. If you have any questions and you cannot find the answers on the blog, please send us a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this blog post; you will see it after the comments section.

Wednesday, 18 February 2015

Hello everyone, and welcome to a brand new challenge on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. We would like to welcome our new followers this month, and to thank our regular followers for your continued support. We really enjoy reading your comments and seeing the amazing entries as they arrive for the challenges.

We will be announcing the winner for Challenge Seven next week, both here and on our Facebook page, so be sure to check the announcement to see if you are the winner of our prize.

As reminder to those of you who have visited our blog before, and for anyone who is new to the blog, our challenges are monthly, based on an inspirational photo and a colour swatch. A new challenge is posted on the third Wednesday of every month and you can use any medium to create your projects; paints, inks, pencils, pens, etc., as long as you keep to the colours from the colour swatch in your project.

We are offering a monthly prize of £15 to spend on Chocolate Baroque stamps to one lucky winner, who will be selected by Random.org from all of the entrants who have used Chocolate Baroque stamps that are currently available on the website. We welcome entries incorporating other stamps, but they will not be eligible to win the prize. All entrants will have the chance to be selected as one of our Top Three and can then display our 'I made the Top Three at Chocolate Baroque' badge on their blog.

Now onto this month's challenge, which has been inspired by a photograph taken by Glenda:

The challenge will close at 12.00 p.m. on Tuesday 17th March 2015, and the winner will be announced on Wednesday 25th March 2015. Here are some inspirational projects from the Design Team for you:

Wednesday, 11 February 2015

Hello everyone, and welcome to another week on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. We hope that you have been enjoying the current challenge, and if you have not entered yet, you still have a few days left. You can add your projects to the link in this post.

We are always amazed by the range of entries that we receive for the challenges, and we would like to highlight just a few from this challenge in our post this week.

Rachel has created a groovy feminine card using one of our newer individual cling mounted stamps on her card, the dotty background is really eye-catching:

Regina has made a lovely fairy scene for her card. The background stencil is great and the card layout is very clever:

Lavinia has mixed her stamps to add a great Art Deco feel to her card:

Finally Debbie has made a quirky rooster card, and another great background:

Thank you to everyone who has entered this month so far, and we hope to see lots more entries from you before the challenge deadline next week.

We have a free download for you from Lesley this week, her design is so versatile, and you will be able to use it for so many of your projects. Please do not pass the image onto others, but send them back here to collect the freebie for themselves.

To obtain your free download, please click on the image below. Once you have enlarged the image on your screen, right click the image, choose the option 'Save As', and save the image to your computer. You can now print the image onto a variety of surfaces for your crafting projects.

The Design Team have been making some projects with the download for your inspiration.

If you feel inspired to make something with one of Lesley's downloads yourself, why not upload a picture to our Facebook Page? We would love to see what you have made.

We will be back next week with another post, and a brand new challenge. Don't forget, if you have any questions, and you can't find the answers on the blog, please send us a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this blog post; you will see it after the comments section.

Our challenges are monthly, based on an inspirational photo and a colour swatch. A new challenge is launched on the third Wednesday of every month and you can use any medium to create your projects; inks, pencils, pens, etc,. as long as you keep to the colours from the colour swatch in your project. We offer a monthly prize of £15 and the winner is drawn by Random.org from those entries that have used Chocolate Baroque stamps currently available on the website. We welcome entries from anyone however, and all entries will be considered by the DT members for a slot in the Top Three each month.

This week, we have more inspiration from the DT. Our first project is a beautiful, elegant floral card from Debbie:

Our second card is from Maria, who has kindly provided a tutorial for her rose themed card:

-Put the four ink colours onto the acrylic block, and mist with water so that the colours mix together.
-Lay your white paper onto the block and press firmly so that the background is completely coloured.
-Dry the paper with your heat tool.
-Stamp the rose image using Memento Rich Cocoa ink.
-Mask the rose image, and add some text to the background using Adirondack Terracotta ink.
-Using the flower image from the Dusky Damask stamp set and Rich Cocoa Memento ink, complete the background.
-Place some Adirondack Terracotta ink on your craft sheet and using a small paint brush and some water, colour the rose. Complete the stem and leaves in the same way, using Memento Bamboo Leaves ink.
-Add some white accents here and there with the gelly pen.
-Colour the border of the card by edging it with Versamark ink and adding copper embossing powder.
-Mount the card onto 3D foam pads and add it to the folded green card.

Thank you to Debbie and Maria for their inspiration this week. We will be back next week with another post and more inspiration for you. We look forward to seeing more of your entries and hope that you will have fun creating something for the challenge.

You can add your entries to the Inlinkz link here. In the meantime, don't forget if you have any questions, and you cannot find the answers on the blog pages, please send us a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this blog post; you will see it after the comments section.

Current Challenge

Welcome

A very warm welcome to the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. We love crafting and stamping in particular and we love to share and encourage you to have a go.

We hope that you will be inspired to get your stamps inked up, make some time to play and end up with a creation you are proud to share with us all.

Please take a look around - we have tabs at the top that give you lots of information about how our challenges work and if you have any questions at all, please use the Contact page to get in touch and one of the team will get back to you.